Tag: busy

Busy time: Mozhouse AMS, PublicSpaces, Forest of imagination, etc

Myself at the Podcast news conference in the Lowry Theatre, Salford on 13th June 2023

June and July are busy for me… and you might have noticed less blogging recently. I’m carefully managing my time around the next few months.

Looking forward into June.

13th June – I’m going to be talking and networking at the Podcast news conference in the Lowry Salford. I’m expecting a much more future focused event unlike what I saw at the London podcast show a couple weeks ago, although I did speak and enjoyed the fringe events.

14th June – I will be at the opening of the Forest of Imagination in Bath for a short while but don’t worry I’ll be back in July. Its a wonderful event and takes over most of Bath.

19th June – I am running an ethical dilemma cafe with colleagues and partners within Mozilla House Amsterdam (no covid going to stop us this time). If you are local to Amsterdam, I highly recommend coming along and experiencing not just the ethical dilemma cafe but the many other talks and workshops already scheduled.

27th June – Its the PublicSpaces yearly conference and unlike last year, I will be covid free and looking forward to finally attending such a great conference. Once again if you are in Amsterdam, you will want to attend this a week after Mozhouse AMS.

Phewwww… Now July

5th July – Thinking digital which is usually in mid May, decided to switch to a summer schedule but is still in Gateshead/Newcastle over 1.5 days. Plus its still a must go conference in the UK.

11th July – I’m back at the Forest of Imagination but this time running a workshop with young people and artists as part of the rabbit holes collective. This also sits alongside the Bath digital festival.

Later in July – There is a number of Manchester International Festival events but not as many I have done in previous years.

 

Everyone needs a little self-care time

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Nothing better than a little self-care, by indudging my love of rollercoasters

Its a lesson I’ve learned after many mistakes from a previous life (before my brush with death). Taking some time for myself to chill out a little, especially after one of those busy weeks that I sometimes post.

A while ago during my sabbatical after my brush with death, I did read (listen) to a lot of things, this is also when I decided to get hypnotherapy for my fear of needles. Another thing I picked up was the idea of self-care.

Self–care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we very often overlook. Good self–care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety.

I tie it directly to the conscious living lifestyle which is simple in concept again but being mindful is more tricky that it first seems. For example one of the things I do is plan in self-care time in my calendar, especially when I identify a potentially stressful period coming up. It could be a great time away for work but flights are always full of stressful moments and finding hotels etc. For example last week, I flew to Madrid to talk at the xR fest. It was great but the weather temperature hit a maximum of 41c and my flights were via Brussels. I knew the connection was tight with 55mins between landing and the connecting flight leaving.

Express connection ticketOf course we didn’t actually get into the air for 45mins from Manchester, giving me no time to run across the airport through passport control with the express connection ticket and luckily catch my flight as it was also delayed and they couldn’t quite close the gate with people arriving from previous flights. Trust me it was a close call!

This is all the stuff I thought about while resting in the hot tub at the Hilton Hotel Manchester Monday July 1st. I had planned in a day off and took advantage of a treatment some kind friend had bought me for my 40th birthday.

While listening to The Nod recently I was impressed with the discussion about Self-Care. There were two aspects I liked quite a lot (wish I could transcribe it). In summary the conversation was about getting men (especially black men, being a black culture podcast) to consider self-care as part of being masculine. The discussion reminded me of a discussion I had a long while ago about the game being a self-help book for men who usually avoided self-help books.

Self-care is clearly important but its equally important to find what works for you. The example of a yoga retreat just doesn’t work for me although it might work for others. My kind of self-care is certainly spas and rollercoaster parks…

Maybe your more a sleep in long hours type person or rearrange and clean the house hygge person. What ever it truly is (and I mean truly deeep down) then a little self-care when things get tough is really a life savor!

Next few weeks, are a busy one…

Ian Forrester

Its another busy few weeks and to be fair few months for me (lets not go there now).

This weekend I’ll be hosting the living room of the future in the V&A Museum in London. I can’t tell you how excited I am about the 150+ people who have signed up already.

Then the week after I’m keynoting about the living room of the future at Hello Culture Remix at BBC Digital Cities in Birmingham.

This right before I head to Bristol for a Object based media workshop at Encounters short film festival. I’m also really happy to be judging the xR short films for Encounters.

After a short break its off to the York Mediale to see a commissioned Object based media project with the University York’s Digital Creativity lab, this may also involve a public talk.

Not too long afterwards, theres Mozhouse/Mozfest (however this time I’m not wrangling) but October/November is another post maybe…

A very busy period coming up soon…

Reinventing podcasting

I am preparing myself for another really busy period of time. From Sunday 22nd right through to Sunday 19th November (yes almost a month).

This will mean the usual warning of being busy and not really replying in a timely fashion (what ever that really means).

Some will look at this list and say “ohhhh check you out… lucky devil!”

My reply is yes I am grateful (my gratitude habit) that I can go to these amazing places, but even more that I will get the opportunity to talk to new people (audiences, future producers and maybe potentially co-creators). There are some amazing research projects in the pipeline, stuff that once again makes me very excited.

An amazing well loved colleague recently died. It was a shock but further reminds me and hopefully others our time is finite; We need to spend it doing what we love and making positive things happen. Inspire others to do the same and find their inner geekness.

Can’t say too much right now but in Cardiff & York recently, I share my a couple of ideas in the talks. There are slides which are good pointers to the ambition.

If you want to know more reach out (don’t be shy) or even join Storytellers United Slack.

Busy in November…

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Everybody is busy on the run up to the Holidays but I didn’t expect to be out of the country so much in November. I had planned to be busy September, then October be about Mozfest (feeling guilty I still haven’t written about how Mozfest 2016 went). Then I’d focus on writing the TVX 2017 paper with Anna.

Here’s the lineup of places I’m due to be soon.

I’ll be talking about object based media and the big advantages of pursuing a internet first/driven stratergy and experiences in storytelling. I would be much more on the ball if I didn’t finally get the cold which I seemd to avoid all the way from May.

Another busy period

Ordinary life does not interest me

For the next few weeks I’m pretty busy. My calendar looks like I may have eaten something I’m allergic to and threw up. Leaving you with that pretty nasty thought.

Some of the highlights include…

Its not so much that I’m doing lots of big stuff, rather all the little bits in between some interesting events. For example getting Visual Perceptive Media on BBC Taster in a sensible way. Writing a paper for TVX 2017, arranging DJ Hackday 2017, etc, etc…

The amount of blogging and tweeting might drop as a result. Sure my 5.5 tweets a day has seriously dropped, but I’m blaming Twitter for that.

I always said an ordinary life does not interest me, and there is a certain amount of hustle involved with this all.